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View Full Version : D&D Playstyles and Spagetti Sauce



harpy
2012-07-16, 01:41 PM
This thread (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?636508-Legends-amp-Lore-7-16-Five-Minute-Workday) reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell's TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html) where he describes how large groups with divergent tastes can broadly have their needs met by finding the clustering of tastes and then creating a line of products that aim for each cluster.

So without doing an empirical study, instead just from the hip, what would likely be the big clusters for playing D&D?


Sandboxy open world that "keeps moving along" regardless of what the players do.
Character based stories where the GM weaves plots around individual player actions.
Tactical combat play where there are a string of set-piece battles leading to a boss battle.
Dungeoncrawling push-your-luck old school style.
Railroady (with player consent) play that funnels players along through an adventure.

The above isn't meant to be comprehensive or authoritative, just firing off a quick sketch of some possible clusters.

If you were on the 5e design team and wanted to follow this clustering approach to how the modularity would get mapped out, what big categories would you aim for?

Craft (Cheese)
2012-07-16, 02:11 PM
Here's one: "Talky" campaigns, where combat very rarely happens. D&D desperately needs better rules than Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate/Sense Motive to support this kind of gameplay.